"A Fireside Chat, Not A Firing"
Several weeks ago we posted a Theory Point on Media Richness, arguing for the importance of deliberately matching medium and message. Today's Guardian (UK) posts an article on the topic--a piece describing how senior executives are increasingly using "rich" PC-based media clips as means of communicating with employees in the face of sagging trust and credibility. We generally would support the practice--presuming it is a supplement to, and not a replacement for, frequent, face-to-face, and unstructured executive visibility. To read A Fireside Chat, Not A Firing, click here.
Taking FDR's lead, chief executives and chairmen across industry are now using that most ubiquitous of office equipment, the desktop PC, to reassure their workers that things are not as bad as the headlines might suggest ... rather than a round-robin email from the boss, many staff now find themselves faced with pop-up video clips of their senior managers.